Building the board

The following instructions are for a Model2-Saturn (round buttons) — I’m pretty sure the same is possible for other Saturns, but the soldering-points are not the same. Have a look at some Saturn-Sites, I think I have seen descriptions for older Saturns there.

Main prerequisites (detailed partlist later)

  • Soldering iron & steady hand
  • Microchip PIC 16F630
  • Some means of flashing code onto the 16F630
  • Our favourite tool: common sense!

Back then I used a self-built JDM’s programmer, and IC-Prog as the flashing-application. If you don’t have anything available for flashing, it’s nowadays probably easiest to get some flasher off eBay.

The mod-board

This is the schematic of the mod:

Here are the parts:

C1Ceramic capacitor, ~ 100nF
R1, R2215, 20mA for both LEDs
D1Multicolor LED (3-pin)
IC1PIC 16F630


Of course the LED is not on the mod itself, it’s gonna replace the normal green power-LED. This is how it looks here, readily installed. It’s quite a small circuit, soldering it on a breadboard is done in no time.

Next: Attaching it to the flipside